Today my letter to the Boston Globe was published. The Globe added the photo:

LETTERS

Diversity is the essence of America

Updated October 6, 2024, 2:10 a.m.

19

Jeneba Kanu, originally from Sierra Leone, held an American flag while waiting to become a US 

citizen during a naturalization ceremony at George Washington's Mount Vernon in Alexandria, Va., 

in May 2006.JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

Renée Graham has written the speech that I wish Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris would read to the nation (“Diversity is America’s greatest strength. But now a lot of people find it threatening,” Ideas, Sept. 29).

Diversity is the essence of America. The ancestors of all of the people who are Americans came from elsewhere. Even the Indigenous people originated in Asia. These arrivals, recent and distant, have mixed in various ways, culturally and biologically, to produce not an undifferentiated blob but a degree of diversity that might be unique in the world.

Harris, who affirms her Black and Asian American heritage, is symbolic of this diversity. Let’s move forward with her.

John L. Hodge

Jamaica Plain